[WEB4LIB] Netscape email inbox corrupted - recovery?

[Robert Tiess]

Hi, Laurie. If you can get into the e-mail program at all, try emptying the Trash (Click File, Empty Trash on Local Mail).  Doing so can force Netscape to optimize folders and rebuild the message index for each folder, possibly correcting any corruption in the message index that could be causing crashes.

The message folders in Netscape 4.7x are actually text files stored wherever your Netscape users/[username]/mail subdirectory can be found.  If there aren't too many message in the inbox (like under 100 and few or none with file attachments), you might be able to open and view the entire inbox in a text editor (not Notepad, which only handles very small text files; something like NoteTab Light).  Even WordPad might read the entire file.

You can save this file to another filename in another subdirectory (e.g. c:\temp) for later viewing and any manual message recovery you might need to perform).  Once you have done so you can delete the INBOX and INBOX.SNM file. You would need to exit Netscape first to attempt this.  Next time you run Netscape it should generate a new Inbox file.

The .SNM files in the Netscape users/[username]/mail subdirectory are the message index files.  The main folders have no file extensions (e.g. INBOX).  The .SNM file for the Sent folder for example is SENT.SNM.  It's been my experience that whenever folders start acting funny and cause crashes that .SNM files, once deleted, proved to be the problem or part of it. Netscape rebuilds .SNM files the next time the mail client is launched.  Most times I've done that it's corrected problems on older systems I administer.

Occasionally there are messages that contain HTML, Javascript, etc., that can crash Netscape.  To get around some of this problems I temporarily disabled (under Edit/Preferences) Javascript for mail.  Also, under Mail & Newsgroups in Preferences I unchecked "Remember the last selected message" before launching the mail program so the offending message didn't first appear the next time I brought up e-mail.

Some HTML messages may try to pull data from other websites. By clicking the online/offline toggle icon (lower left, next to the lock icon) and going offline I was able to get to other problematic messages and delete them.  Using multiple message select (clicking on multiple message subject lines while holding the CTRL key), you can also get around problematic messages by first clicking on a known "safe" message (maybe one you can e-mail yourself) then select the other message(s) and click Delete when done.  Make sure you toggle back the offline/online button to online.

I hope some of this will be helpful. Good luck!
Robert



Laurie Louis wrote:
> Hello,
> I have a staff Netscape 4.7 user with a corrupted Inbox folder.
> Everytime you try to open the mailbox, Netscape crashes. I have tried
> importing the user profile into Eudora Light, and Norton antivirus real
> time protection found 3 viruses during that process. I am able to open
> the Sent mail folder now (although part of it is missing), but still
> unable to access the Inbox folder. Does anyone have any tips on other
> ways I could recover the users mail? Or any email/data recovery software
> you could recommend? Any ideas would be welcome.
> 
> --
> Laurie Louis, A+, Network+
> Computer Support Specialist
> 
> Albany Public Library
> 161 Washington Avenue
> Albany, N.Y. 12210
> 
> 518.427.4341
> 518.449.3386 (fax)
> louisl at uhls.lib.ny.us
> http://www.albanypubliclibrary.org/